Reggie McNamara (born Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia, 7 November 1887,[1][2] died Belleville, New Jersey, United States,[3] October 1970[4] or 1971[3][1][5] or 1972[6]) was an Australian cyclist known as a roughhouse velodrome rider with a string of dramatic crashes and broken bones over 20 years.

He began racing for money in local fairs around Sydney,[4] shooting kangaroos and selling their skins to raise the entry fee.

McNamara went to the US and took American nationality when he married an Irish nurse,[8] Elizabeth McDonough in 1913,[4] whom he had met after breaking a leg during his first training ride.

[1] An American newspaper reported: To undergo a serious operation on the fourth day of a six-day race and then finish the contest and run third, less than a wheel's length behind the winner, is going some.

So often has this fellow pulled through tight places solely on his nerve he has been dubbed the "Iron Man" of cycling.It was in the Melbourne, Australia, six day race two years ago that McNamara jumped off his wheel, had an incision several inches long made in his side and then resumed the race after more than a dozen stitches were taken to bring the gap together.

During the painful operation the "Iron Man" never winced, ignoring his own troubles, he enquired continually about Clark, who was in poor condition and riding none too well.

When a reporter asked McNamara if he parted his hair down the middle because movie star Rudolph Valentino did, he shook his head:"That's just so the sawbones has a centre point to start from.

"[8] Peter Nye said: He distinguished himself by winning the [Madison Square] Garden's six-days in March and December in 1926, but only after narrowly averting disaster.

In the final 15 minutes during the heat of the action in December when McNamara and his partner, Pietro Linari of Italy, were trading places, both were caught in a spectacular high-speed crash.

[1]The journalist René de Latour, who worked as McNamara's track manager for several years, said of a chase at the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris: The magazine Time believed in 1932 that it had found another Iron Man.

He earns $28,000 per year, has a barber shave him every day of the race, frequently dines on rice, lobster and beer with Tenor Benjiamino Gigli of the Metropolitan Opera Company.